Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR)
Title
Book Review: Weaving Work and Motherhood by Anita Ilta Garey
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
May 2001
Weaving Work and Motherhood is an engaging
challenge to conventional “orientation”
approaches to work or motherhood,
offering instead the metaphor of weaving.
Beginning with the experiences of
37 mothers employed at a hospital, Anita
Ilta Garey’s goal is to understand “what
it means to be a worker with children and a
mother at work.”
Garey favors the metaphor of weaving
as a way to “step back and view the whole,
to think of the fabric of a life, the strength
of the weave, and the intricacy of design. It
reminds us not to get lost in the close examination
of one moment or one strand, and
to remember that moments and strands are
parts of the weave but not the weave itself.
Work, family, friendships, reflection, vocation,
and recreation are parts of a person’s
life. They are not separately and on their
own, the life or the person” (p. 192).
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Comments
Published in Journal of Marriage and Family 63:2 (May, 2001), pp. 595–596. Copyright © 2001 National Council on Family Relations; published by Blackwell Publishing. Used by permission.